The Story of Yin and Yang
by v-the-valiant
Summary: Just a story fleshing out the episode where Shawn and Yang first encounter each other.


**Intro:**

**Just wanted to flesh out Shawn and Yang's first encounter a bit and take a different turn towards the end.**

**I do not own Psych.**

* * *

SHAWN

He could hear his heartbeat pulsing hot and hard in his ears. He still heard the radio chatter and worried murmurs around him, but it all faded into the background as meaningless sounds. With trembling hands, he fumbled through his mom's purse without really seeing.

Life stopped for him in that moment. His perfect memory kept replaying every excruciating detail of the last half hour in his head. That memory that he was so proud of, now felt like a curse.

* * *

_Shawn rushed into the hotel room, Gus close behind him. The waitress was there, tied to a chair, unconscious or dead, he couldn't tell. _

_When Juliet said she was alive, he let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. _

_Lassiter took out the paper from the girl's mouth, opened the crumpled message and read, "Shawn no longer wants to play, stakes too low to make you stay." Lassie's voice lilted in question at the end of the message, and he looked at Shawn, as did everybody else, for answers he didn't have. _

_Stakes too low... Stakes too low... Yang has made the stakes higher, but what does that mean? By returning the hostage? _

_He must have taken something else. Someone else. _

_His mind raced over the possibilities. Gus? Accounted for. Juliet? Here. Dad? Unlikely. _

_Abigail? _

_His blood ran cold. Did Yang have Abigail? Couldn't be... They hadn't even had a first date, there was barely even a relationship! But the things Yang knew... the things Yang knew about him were chilling. _

_He moved to the next room, eyes roving for clues. He stopped when he saw a gray purse on the dresser and picked it up, trying to place it._

_Then it clicked. He turned around and faced the contrived yin yang sign on the door he just passed. He felt his knees go weak, blood draining from his face. His voice came out a strangled whisper. "He's-He's got her...Gus..." He collapsed into the arm chair behind him. "He's got my mom."_

* * *

He hadn't thought of _her_. It hadn't even crossed his mind, so when he finally put the clues together in his head - _too slowly,_ he thought in anguish,_ TOO SLOW - _it hit him like a sucker punch in the gut. Somehow his own mother didn't figure into his list of potential targets. Maybe because she was rarely in town... maybe because of their somewhat estranged relationship... but it wasn't that. He knew she was in town, he saw her just a few hours ago, and although they didn't really talk or spend time together, he still loved his mother. It was something else that subconsciously kept him from putting her on the list.

It felt _too _personal, _too _close.

It was like Yang crossed some imaginary line in Shawn's head that he thought Yang would never dare cross.

It was the closest that Yang could have hit - a perfect bulls-eye. His head fell into his hands in despair.

* * *

JULIET

Juliet didn't know what to do. She always prided herself on her decisiveness and on being a doer, but now she was completely lost. She wrung her hands, not sure what to do with them. From the moment she heard those anguished words_, "He's got my mom," _she had frozen.

Her eyes flitted to Shawn, pale and quiet in the chair, trying to avoid staring at him in his misery. Her heart wrenched for Shawn. She had never seen him like this, not in the three years that they had been working together, side by side, almost day in and day out. Not in all the near life-and-death situations they had found themselves in, not a single time had she seen Shawn at a loss for words.

She watched Gus talking to the Chief, taking over for Shawn, listing anyone that Shawn had a personal connection with that may be in danger. Vick gave orders in a clipped voice into her phone to post man-power outside of Henry's home and to track down Abigail Lytar. Gus's parents were sent patrol cars too. After that? No one else. Shawn had never let anyone else get close enough to him to be a target.

...It was more than that, Juliet admitted to herself. It wasn't just his silence that scared her. It was his utter naked vulnerability. Shawn, who almost never let anyone get close enough that his list of real friends could be counted on one hand, was completely exposed in that moment, totally bare emotionally. He looked deflated, like a balloon with all the air taken out of him, and most frightening of all, defeated. Almost...catatonic. He seemed completely unaware of what was going on around him, so out of character for Shawn who always noticed everything. She wanted to comfort him, put a hand on his shoulder, or promise him that it will all be OK, or something, _something _to do, something to make this silent and trembling Shawn disappear and the smiling and cocky Shawn reappear.

* * *

SHAWN

Gus's voice broke through the buzzing in his brain.

"If this is their idea of Christmas, I _gotta_ be here for New Year's." He forced a chuckle and struck a pose.

Lassie, Jules, and the rest of the team stared incredulously at Gus, thinking he lost his mind.

"This is no time to be quoting Die Hard, you blabbering idiot. You've been an absolute imbecile all day." seethed Lassie.

But his friend's voice broke the spell.

Gus remembered.

_" 'Cause I have to work like this, OK? If that guy gets in my head, we lose. I have to do my thing." _Shawn had told him just a few hours ago.

His head began to clear, and the wisp of a smile appeared on his face. The Die Hard reference couldn't have been more spot on. He needed to be as bad-ass as McLane. Slowly, he lifted his head out of his hands and took a long, hard look at his mother's belongings taped to the door in the shape of a yin-yang.

"Take _this _under advisement, Yang." He said determinedly through gritted teeth.

He shot up out of the chair, knocking his mother's purse out of his lap and strode over to the sign on the door. He held two fingers to his temple and stared intently looking for clues, but when his eyes locked on the cutout of his adolescent self, he blanked. He rubbed his hands over his face, exhaled in frustration. "I don't see anything."

"C'mon Shawn, you've got this." Gus said with conviction. "Let's yippee-kay-yay this motherf**r."

He took a deep breath, focused again, and then...

"The lipstick." It was open, and the top was smudged. "He wrote a message somewhere with lipstick."

Officers rushed around the hotel room searching for the clue, but Shawn followed with his eyes the direction the lipstick was pointing.

He rushed over to the hanging shaving mirror in the bathroom and flipped it over. A few words in his mother's mauve lipstick, with a picture taped underneath. His heart dropped to the floor - it was a picture of his mother.

He ripped it off the mirror. She was wearing the same pale gray sweater he saw her wearing earlier today, but her face... her mouth taped, eyes wide and fearful. Hanging around her neck was a sign.

Gus read out loud over his shoulder. "Mom says hi. And bye. Just in case."

"Enjoy the vue." Lassiter read the message on the mirror. "What does that mean?"

"V.U.E. Why did he spell it that way?" Gus wondered out loud.

It triggered a memory. Something in the morning paper. Images flashed through his mind.

"That's the hint." said Mary. "Or maybe he ran out of lipstick."

"Brendan Vu! From the spelling bee!" exclaimed Gus.

The memory became clear. An ad for Santa Barbara Cinema Vue.

"Good guess," Shawn said, barely above a whisper. "But it's a misdirect. I know exactly what he wants me to watch." He swept out of the room.

* * *

JULIET

Everyone stared, frozen in place, at the door that Shawn just passed through like a ghost. As if under a spell, for a few moments, all was still; then the confused murmuring started. Gus was the first to move, racing down the hallway after Shawn, and Juliet followed, close on his heels.

"Shawn!" Gus yelled after him. "_Shawn!" _

Gus caught up to him in the parking lot. "Where are you going? What does Yang want you to watch?" Gus asked, panting, hands on his knees.

Shawn stopped and hesitated for a second before brushing off the questions. "No one else needs to be involved."

"What?" Gus looked at him incredulously. "You're not actually thinking of going on your own?"

Shawn spun around and jangled the Blueberry's keys in front of Gus's face, having pick-pocketed them earlier. "Yang wants _me _there, he didn't invite you groupies." Shawn replied, somewhat derisively, before turning around and continuing to walk to the car.

Gus grabbed Shawn by the arm and answered angrily. "Don't be a martyr! You're out of your mind if you think we're going to let you go alone!"

Shawn shoved Gus off hard with both hands. Gus stumbled back a little bit, with a shocked look on his face.

"I don't need a babysitter!" Shawn yelled. "I don't need you there dragging me down!" He breathed hard, eyes hard and wild.

"Babysitter? Dragging you down?" Gus asked, dangerously. "You ARE crazy if you think you can do this without us! Even with your...gift, you're a screw-up without me there! I'm not just your fucking chauffeur!" Gus countered.

Juliet could see Shawn's nostrils flare at the words 'screw-up,' hitting a raw nerve. She watched in alarm at the quickly escalating situation, and was actually afraid that it was about to turn into a full-on brawl between the two best friends when Carlton stepped between them.

"I am under orders that NEITHER of you are to be left alone!" Carlton barked out. "You will BOTH be riding with me and O'Hara! You WILL follow my orders, or else I will handcuff both of you morons!"

Shawn and Gus fell silent, still glaring at each other.

Carlton then turned to Shawn with a dangerous glint in his eyes and grabbed him roughly by the front of his shirt. "And YOU..." He spoke slowly, carefully enunciating every word. "You will NOT be engaging in any Rambo-type suicide plans and jeopardize the mission or I will leave you in the holding cell at the station. Is that clear?"

Shawn looked away, but remained silent.

Carlton shook him not too gently and repeated menacingly quiet. "Is. That. Clear?"

"Crystal." Shawn muttered in response.

Carlton was still holding Shawn's shirt in his grip. "Now. Where is Yang telling you to go?"

Shawn was still looking away, staring at the dirt, but answered quietly. "Cinema Vue Drive-In Movies. They have a showing tonight at 7:30."

Carlton loosened his grip and checked his watch. Shawn quickly took a few steps back, smoothing down his shirt, refusing to meet anybody's gaze.

"One hour and forty five minutes until go-time, everybody."

The next several minutes in the car to the drive-in cinema were heavy with tension. Lassiter drove, silently. Juliet sat in the front passenger seat, silently. Shawn and Gus rode in the back, silently. Juliet glanced back worriedly at Shawn, who stared out the window, completely lost in his own thoughts. _If someone doesn't snap Shawn out of this, it's all over,_ Juliet thought hopelessly. _Yang will win. We can't win this game without him. _

She turned to look at Gus, and mouthed pleadingly, "_Do something!"_

Gus mouthed back in frustration, "_Do what?" _

Juliet mouthed back, "_I don't know! Something!"_

Gus just looked back helplessly, then Carlton cleared his throat loudly.

"Here's the plan. Once we get to the drive-thru, priority is to find the hostage and to ensure her safety. _Second _priority is to identify the perp and bring him down. In THAT order."

"There will be NO funny business. This operation is my call. Each of us will receive an earpiece to be in contact. The line is to be _exclusively _used for emergency communication, not 80's movie trivia."

"No fucking shit, Lassiter, it's not like we're ordering pizza!" Gus immediately replied.

Shawn made a little snort at this and finally, _finally_, tore his gaze away from the window to the rest of the group. Juliet breathed a sigh of relief to see a glimmer of the Shawn she knew. Shawn and Gus exchanged a look, and although nothing was said between them, she knew they would be alright. Juliet knew Shawn couldn't bring himself to apologize under the best of circumstances, but she also knew Gus understood what Shawn meant to say from that look in his eyes.

"Welcome to the party, pal." Gus said, quoting yet another Die Hard scene.

"That makes you Argyle, you know." He said, with a twisted smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"I know." Gus said, smiling back, equally grotesque.

"That makes Lassie Sgt. Powell. You got any Twinkies up there to share, Lassiter?" Shawn said jokingly, but it sounded strained and forced.

Carlton just ignored his question and picked up speed.


End file.
